


The World Can't Change How We Feel

by metaphasia



Category: Real Genius (1985)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:31:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphasia/pseuds/metaphasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time always marches on, and as it does, we find ourselves in the same play, but in unfamiliar roles.</p><p>Or, how Mitch and Chris are still saving the world, one discovery at a time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Can't Change How We Feel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abriata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abriata/gifts).



Dan wasn't sure what he expected when he got to Pacific Tech. He thought that he had been prepared for anything. He was not prepared, however, to, instead of finding the President's Tea where it had been listed, find only a strange man reading Kant at a picnic table, with a full tea set and a plate of finger sandwiches. Who happened to be wearing slippers shaped like giraffes. Dan had been aware that Pacific Tech was home to not just the brightest minds, but the most eccentric as well, but this strained the limits of his credulity.  
"Excuse me," Dan said, but the man continued to ignore him. "Excuse me, sir? I'm Daniel Moon, and I'm looking for the President's Tea?"  
The man sighed, and set down his book. "This is the location that was mentioned, is it not? And this is a tea set, is it not? What part of this setup escapes you?"  
"But, there's no one here!"  
"well of course not, everyone at the President's Tea, inside the building."  
Dan sighed, and turned to walk away to the nearby building, when another voice rang out from behind him.  
"You're not giving the fishes a hard time, are you, Chris?"  
Dan turned back around, and saw a couple approaching him. They were dressed much nicer than the man at the table, and seemed much more, in a word, normal. The man walked towards Dan, and extended his hand. "I'm the advisor for the freshman hall," he said.  
Dan was already stretching out his arm to shake the man's hand, and froze. "But the advisor is supposed to be Mitch Taylor," Dan said uncertainly.  
"That's me," Mitch said.  
"But if you're Mitch - the Mitch Taylor - if you're Mitch, then that must mean that that's Jordan," Dan said, as Jordan nodded enthusiastically at his logic, "And that must mean that he's Chris Knight."  
"Clearly, we're continuing our tradition of admitting only the finest minds in each generation," said Chris Knight. Chris Knight, who was one of the Deans of the university, and the hosts of the President's Tea.  
The rest of the President's Tea was quieter, but no less uneventful than how it had begun for Dan. Partway through, he met Professor Hofstadter, who offered him a position on his team, researching ultrasonic vibration generation.

The semester progressed slowly. The course work was a level of difficulty unlike any that Dan had encountered previously. The ultrasonic research was slow, and disjointed. Dan was nearly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity and complexity of work involved. Luckily, he was always able to go to Mitch for advice; both on technical subjects, and on life in general. Finally, as finals approached, the research team made a breakthrough in the ultrasonic project, at the same time that Dan began to feel confident about his understanding of the course material.  
It was on the first day of finals week that Professor Hofstadter and all the material in the research lab both disappeared.

Dan spent the entire week scouring the campus, in between taking his finals, looking for any sign of Professor Hofstadter, or the ultrasonic research project. Finally, after finding nothing, he went to Mitch. Shockingly, Mitch had never heard of the project either.  
"Well, in situations like this, there's only one place to go that would  
"That particular branch of research has stalled," Chris said. "It's in zugzwang."  
Mitch sighed. "Again? That's the third one this year."  
"Wait," Dan asked, "Zugzwang? Where's that? I've never heard of Zugzwang Hall."  
Mitch laughed, a short bark of amusement. "It's not a where, it's a what. It's from chess. It means that any possible move is bad, so the only winning move is not to play."  
"But you have to move, in chess," Dan said in bewilderment.  
"But not in real life," Chris said. "Made it into this college, and still thinks real life is like chess?"  
"We use it to refer to a project that we think has moral or ethical concerns," Mitch explained. "We just quietly stall the research, and say that it didn't lead anywhere, while we work on other fields. If the military types think that the research won't be able to produce a viable weapon, they won't try to build a weapon out of it."  
"But more importantly," Chris continued, "If I had that project shut down, why does Moon think he was working on it?"  
Mitch groaned. "Who did you say was in charge of the research again, Dan?"  
"Professor Hofstadter," Dan informed them.  
Chris hung his head. "Old Professor Hofstadter has been dead for over five years. You got lied to, Moon. And this smells like the CIA is up to their old tricks."  
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to forget to check your references?" Mitch asked with another groan.

Convincing Dan to help stop the CIA from transforming his device into a weapon had been tricky; it wasn't that he didn't want to help, it was that he had no idea how they were going to manage to stop the government. The trickiest part had been finding where it was housed, but once they bluffed their way into the logs at the nearby naval base in Alameda, they located the experimental test submarine that it was being mounted on. Breaking into the naval base where it was proved surprisingly simple. A few well placed area rugs let them bypass the barbed wire fences surrounding the base, and the patrol schedules that they had found from hacking into the base's computers meant that there were no guards nearby when they snuck across. Similarly, the SCUBA equipment that Jordan had provided let them get to the submarine undetected by going through the water.  
Navigating through the submarine to get to the ultrasonic generator had been the most nerve-wracking experience in Dan's life, worse than the entirety of finals week was.  
"The trick is to act like you belong," Mitch told him. "No one will question you unless they have a reason. The key is to not give them one."  
They finally reached the generator room, which was mercifully empty.  
"I've never liked chess," Mitch said, as he crawled under the machine. "It was always much more Chris' game than mine. Wrench."  
He continued to speak as he worked, removing some components, and adding others. "It was too competitive for my tastes. I don't like games where the way to win is by making everyone else lose. Screwdriver. I prefer to work with other people. Wire cutter. But that's the great thing about science. It's not about who's the best; it's not a competition. Everyone works together, to push the boundaries of knowledge out further, and at the end of the day, we're better off than when we started. Pliers. But these people, they take the discoveries that scientists make, and they turn them into weapons. Turn science into a competition. And, chip."  
Mitch quickly reattached the casing, and scampered back out from underneath the console, as Dan packed up their tools. It wasn't until they were on their way out that Mitch began speaking again.  
"That's why we have to stop them from doing this. Using our discoveries this way is wrong. Stopping them, it's a moral imperative."


End file.
